Game Review: Mystery Case Files: The Countess Collector’s Edition (first play)

Developer: Eipix Entertainment
Publisher: Big Fish Games
Original Release Date: 21st November 2018
Platform: PC

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am a big fan of the Mystery Case Files series. Or rather, I’m a big fan of the Ravenhearst arc within the MCF series – though I enjoyed the two Dire Grove games, and I like going back to Huntsville occasionally for something lighter. I’m not quite at the stage of writing Charles Dalimar fan fic, but I will admit to getting really quite invested in the Ravenhearst story. My favourite Mystery Case Files games are Fate’s Carnival (for the mind-boggling detail and complexity of the gameplay) and Escape from Ravenhearst (which is a truly bizarre and disturbing experience, even if it does have some problems when it comes to gameplay). It’s fair to say that no HOPAs have come close to those two games for me, though I live in hope.

Nevertheless, Mystery Case Files has been something of a disappointment for me since Dire Grove, Sacred Grove – and since Eipix took over the development. I’m still hoping that we can just do a Highlander 2 on Key to Ravenhearst and Ravenhearst Unlocked, because these were just terrible (and inconsistent) instalments of the story. Broken Hour and The Black Veil (non-Ravenhearst games) were okay, but they lacked the magic of the earlier games. I decided to give Mystery Case Files: The Countess a try, since I can’t quite let go of my Master Detective badge yet. I knew it wasn’t going to be another Fate’s Carnival, but I thought it might at least be better than Ravenhearst Unlocked! And I was right… The Countess is somewhere in between.

You play – once again – as a Master Detective, though it’s not clear whether you’re the same detective who had the run-ins with Charles Dalimar and his dad. The game begins with a short intro scene, setting up a story about a creepy mirror and the thing that lives inside it. You then hear a message from the queen (on a tape recorder this time, not the phone) giving you your mission. Lady Eleanor Coddington has disappeared while renovating her ancestral estate, once the home of children’s author Gloria Coddington (Eleanor’s grandmother, you’re told). When you arrive at the estate, it’s closed off, crumbling and massively creepy (as with most of the Mystery Case Files games, this one goes for the Gothic aesthetic).

Early on in the game (and highlighted in the intro scene), you discover that a large black mirror has some significance, and that there is a supernatural creature residing within it who is most likely responsible for the dark goings-on. Your main objective is to find and rescue Eleanor, but this is wrapped up in a quest to uncover the truth about Gloria, the mirror and the sinister force at work in the manor. To be honest, it’s not the most original storyline for a HOPA, and there are few twists or surprises as things unfold. Rescue the girl, defeat the demon, leave the house.

This is a haunted house game, and it’s very much in the expected style. The colour palette is dark, though I didn’t find scenes too dark to identify objects. As with the other Eipix MCF games, there are some great bits of illustration here – the creature in the mirror is particularly well-done – but there are some fairly bland elements too. NPCs are illustrated but not always fully animated, though they are a big step up from the cartoonish characters in Key to Ravenhearst and Ravenhearst Unlocked. The cutscenes are well done and integrated into the gameplay without being too jarring. There’s also a nice scene in a ballroom that reminded me a bit of Escape from Ravenhearst – though it’s much less unsettling (obvs).

In terms of design though, there were a couple of things that frustrated me as a Mystery Case Files fan. I missed the visual nods to other games in the series (unless I didn’t spot them first time round) – a Madame Fate bobblehead here, a 13th Skull decoration there. The music also annoyed me. It’s almost the Mystery Case Files theme (I was going to say ‘iconic’ theme, but I’m not sure the games are well-enough known for me to make that claim), but the refrain is never quite finished. Key to Ravenhearst/Ravenhearst Unlocked played the same trick – the first few notes are played, but it’s not quite the full theme. If I wasn’t expecting my beloved MCF theme, I would’ve said that the music was good – it’s atmospheric and evocative, and it doesn’t loop too much. In a way, the music is illustrative of the game as a whole… it’s almost recognizable as Mystery Case Files, but stops just short of being satisfying.

This is a fairly straightforward HOPA – you move from room to room, putting stuff in your inventory, using stuff from your inventory, and finding mini-games and HOGs as you go. There are some ‘plus items’ (where you have to do something or add something to an item in your inventory), which some people like but I find a bit irritating to be honest. There’s also an interactive jump map in the game. I try and avoid using jump maps – it draws you out of the story if you start teleporting between rooms – but this means that I end up having a bit of back and forth at times. However, The Countess does have another feature that I do like, and that’s the closing off of rooms after you’ve finished a chapter. That’s done reasonably seamlessly here – something happens within the story that makes it plausibly impossible for you to return to your previous location.

There’s a range of mini-games here, some of which are really tricky. I played on Custom difficulty mode (and I do like games where you can customize difficulty), so I had a slow recharge on Hint and Skip. I did still have to use both though, as some of the mini-games were really hard (and some needed lots of fiddly clicking, which I don’t enjoy). There are some almost ‘Super Puzzles’ here – where you have to complete a series of small puzzles in order – but they’re a shadow of Fate’s Carnival’s Rube Goldberg games.

Puzzles aside, I found the gameplay a bit frustrating. The progression from one task to the next wasn’t always logical – I felt like I was mostly wandering in and out of rooms checking them out, rather than consistently searching for Eleanor (who I occasionally forgot all about). Items from the inventory weren’t always used in a logical way either. Often, the what, why and where were unclear, and I had to resort to guesswork and random tries. Towards the end of the game – and I don’t know if this was just because I was tired – I found it less and less obvious what I had to do next, and so I reluctantly resorted to Hint (I even used the jump map a couple of times – shock, horror!).

Obviously, I’m tempted to say that the characters are also a shadow of former instalments. That probably wouldn’t be fair though, as the Ravenhearst arc is a bit of an outlier when it comes to HOPA characters – no game is ever going to come close to creating a character like Charles Dalimar. The Countess gives us some standard fare: the first-person PC is an undifferentiated Master Detective, and the adversary is a demonic creature that we see, but don’t really interact with. There are a couple of other NPCs, with whom you have a little bit of interaction, but most of the characters’ backstory is revealed through cutscenes. An interesting storyline emerges about one of the characters (which isn’t too difficult to guess, but apparently comes as a surprise within the game), which does add a little bit of depth to the story. However, I found it difficult to get really invested in the characters.

I played the CE for this one, and there were a few extras with it. There’s a bonus chapter – which, to be honest, left me a little confused by its ending (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve played it). The CE also has collectibles – the now-ubiquitous but totally pointless morphing objects, and mirror shards – but there’s no endgame with these collectibles, so sadly nothing happens if you get all the pieces of the mirror. There are, however, achievements – and the CE has replays on the HOGs and mini-games, so you can make sure you’ve achieved all you want from a single play-through.

Overall, this is a decent game. On Custom difficulty (no sparkle-indicators, slow recharge on Hint and Skip, minimal black bar instructions), it took me just over six hours to play through. I did find the illogical progression frustrating towards the end, and the story didn’t massively enthuse me, but I probably will play this one again at some point. The big problem is that, while the game is alright if you treat it as a standalone, it is a Mystery Case Files game. But it’s just not Ravenhearst.

Game Review: Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden Collector’s Edition (replay)

Developer: Artifex Mundi
Original Release Date: 29th October 2012
Platform: PC

I thought I’d try something new this year – let’s see how it goes. I’ve been playing Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure games for a while now, though admittedly I’m about as casual as a casual gamer can get (and I very rarely play other types of game). I really do love these games, and like everything I love I do tend to have a lot of thoughts about them. Last year, I wrote an academic paper on HOPAs for the 2018 IGA conference, and I’m intending to expand on that work later in the year. But I have a lot of (less academic, more fan) thoughts as well.

A couple of things I guess I should say… I really don’t play other types of games, so all these reviews will be of HOPAs. And I don’t get chance to play very often, so it might be that I’ll only write a couple of reviews this year. When I do play, I tend to get very immersed and focused (because I play these games when I need a complete distraction from everything), and so I usually play an entire game in one sitting. And I often get way more invested in the storyline and characters than is strictly warranted by a point-and-click hidden object puzzle. It’s quite possible that these will turn out to be ‘blog posts about games’ rather than ‘reviews of games’, to be honest.

That said, here are my thoughts about the first game I played this year: Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden Collector’s Edition. Artifex Mundi games were the first HOPAs I played, and the games that got me hooked on the format. I think Abyss was the second one I got, and I’ve played it through several times. (I do replay my favourites – sometimes a lot).

Robert Marceau is a famous diver who disappeared during an expedition. You play as his lover (also a diver), and you’ve undertaken to follow Robert’s tracks and bring him back safely. This background is told in the intro scene – the game begins when you discover the entrance to an underground city (and clues indicating that Robert may be inside). The city is Eden, a once-utopian underground settlement – now apparently abandoned and fallen into ruins. All the indications are that something bad has happened in Eden, and black wraith-like creatures float in and out of view at certain points. Other reviews tell me that this setting is very similar to the city of Rapture in Bioshock, but having not played that game I’ll happily take their word for it.

The wraiths are ‘Legates’, strange figures of evil that swarm around Eden and, it appears, have imprisoned or killed the human population. Something has happened to release or empower these creatures, and your interactions with a couple of members of the human resistance helps you to piece together the story behind the fall of Eden. Although your primary objective is to find and rescue Robert, this becomes entwined with a quest to uncover the truth about what’s going on and free the remaining survivors of the city.

I really like the storyline in this game – perhaps it’s helped by the fact that I’ve never played Bioshock? – as the dystopian vibe is definitely to my taste. The Legates are creepy, and I like the evidence you find of the resistance movement as well. Obviously, given the type of game this is, the story is only lightly sketched out – though Abyss does this better than many – and so much of the background about Eden’s utopian ambitions and failure is suggested rather than spelt out. Abyss is successful in its show-don’t-tell backstory, which is one of the reasons I like it so much.

The game is very much in the typical style of Artifex Mundi’s HOPAs. Scenes are detailed and beautifully illustrated (with some nice little incidental details here and there), and there’s a rich colour palette throughout. The HOGs themselves – though they are kind of the standard ‘junk piles’ – are designed in a way to seem vaguely plausible as the stuff left behind by fleeing inhabitants. NPCs are illustrated (but not cartoonish) and not fully animated, though there are voiceovers and mouth movements when you interact with them. The music is great and atmospheric, but it is quite a short loop so it gets a little repetitive (especially noticeable in the bonus chapter). Overall, it’s a stylish game with some nice effects and detail.

I’m not going to say much about the basic mechanisms of gameplay here, as it’s pretty standard HOPA stuff. You move from room to room, picking up stuff, using things from your inventory, and finding mini-games and HOGs along the way. There are three difficulty modes, but no custom option. I play on Expert, so I don’t have an interactive map or sparkle-indicators (these are available on the other modes though). The mini-games are all fairly straightforward puzzles (Hint and Skip are available with different recharge times depending on difficulty mode), and the HOGs include some interactive ones. The game does include an option to switch from a HOG to a domino game instead, which some players seem to like. I guess it makes a change if you’re tired of junk piles! Most importantly, the puzzles and progression are fairly logical – it’s usually pretty clear what you’re looking for, why you’re looking for it and where you go next. On the whole, the items in your inventory are used in a logical way (so if you find a glass-cutter, you’re likely to need it to cut some glass and not for another more obscure task).

I don’t really have a lot to say about the gameplay for this one, because I mostly want to talk about characters. In fact, there’s a small chance that I only decided to write this post in the first place so I could rant about one of the characters. Because, you see, although the story is great, the design is great, the gameplay is great… Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden has one of the worst characters ever in it. He’s just a bad person, and I need to tell you that. I need to tell you how much I hate Gregory Logain.

HOPAs have a bit of a problem when it comes to non-player characters. These are single-player, first-person games, which revolve around the player-character’s interaction with objects. Even this object interaction requires a bit of suspension of disbelief (easier in some games than others): we have to just accept that we have no equipment to begin with, and that we don’t keep hold of items after we’ve used them. Interaction with people is even trickier – these games just wouldn’t make sense if we were accompanied by a helpful NPC (animal companions notwithstanding), and there’s (almost) no mechanism for dispatching a hostile one (save the ‘kill the boss’ mini-games that usually involve clicking on swirling shapes to counter an attack). Some games get around this by only using NPCs in cutscenes, but others allow for limited interaction – usually cut short by the NPC running away, being abducted or dying before they can offer any material help. Essentially, HOPAs only really work if you’re wandering around an empty landscape on your own.

Abyss, like some other titles, attempts to create more meaningful interactions. And it’s here that it falls short. Most of the members of the resistance you encounter are dead (including one who, worryingly, looks exactly like the baddie in Artifex Mundi’s Enigmatis series), so that’s fine. You run into a couple of helpless children, who ask you to find things to help them, and that’s also fine. But then you meet Gregory Logain, a member of the resistance. Logain is clearly more than capable of looking after himself (since he’s survived this long), and he seems to know the location of various helpful items. But he doesn’t lift a finger to actually do anything. His niece and nephew are imprisoned and injured in a cage, but he insists that you should run around Eden looking for ways to free them, while he sits around in his bunker doing a big think. And there are various useful items in the bunker itself that he’s clearly never bothered to pick up. I’m not going to go through all the interactions you have with Logain (as some of these would be spoilers), but the guy is seriously a waste of space. After a while, it gets really annoying listening to this idiot saying ‘You go and find all the equipment we need, and I’ll wait in the bunker and do a big think.’ Sadly, the game does not allow you to hit him with any items from your inventory (and trust me – I’ve tried them all).

Seriously, he’s a terrible person and I’m surprised he survived as long as he did in Eden. I think the Legates just keep him around for a laugh.

I’ve got the Collector’s Edition of the game, which has some bonus content. However, I’m not sure how many of these extras are specific to the CE – I think most of them are also included in the Standard Edition. There are no collectibles in this game, but there are achievements. You have to play more than once to get all of these, as one requires the completion of all the HOGs and another requires the completion of all the domino games. There’s also a bonus chapter, but this is quite short and a little repetitive.

There is, of course, another massive problem with the bonus chapter. It’s a prequel chapter, which Artifex Mundi have used elsewhere (e.g. Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek) and which I normally quite like. The problem here is – and I apologize if this is a bit of a spoiler – your character in the bonus chapter is… Gregory Logain. And I hate that guy. I really do.

Overall, Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden is still one of my favourites. It’s stylish and atmospheric, and it has a decent storyline. The HOGs and mini-games aren’t the most difficult or intricate I’ve played, but they are reasonably logical and intuitive. Even having played several times, I still get around five hours of gameplay each time (on Expert mode).

My Year in Books 2018: December

Well... I did it! I stuck to my New Year's Resolution for an entire year! I read loads more novels for pleasure (i.e. in addition to the ones that, while still very pleasurable, I had to read for work, review or my radio show), and I kept up with my short reviews for each one.

And I'll let you into a little secret... while I did say that my reviews were going to be a maximum of 250 words, in fact every single one was exactly 250 words. I didn't intend to do that, but the first one I wrote was dead on 250, and I thought it would be interesting to see how long I could keep that up. It was actually quite a fun exercise (well, my idea of fun anyway), and I might keep going into 2019 with it.

You can read the other Year in Books posts here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

And here's the final list - the books I read in December.

Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon (2018)

Each year, we stay in a cottage in Cornwall for the week before Christmas. As in most holiday cottages, there’s a little shelf of paperbacks, and this book had been left by another guest since our last trip. It’s interesting that I started the year discovering Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, and then ended it with Three Things About Elsie, as they have much in common. Cannon’s book is about Florence, a woman in her eighties who is having trouble remembering things (the ‘D’ word is mentioned a couple of times, but the book takes a broader view on memory, grief and ageing than simply a diagnosis). Florence spends her time talking to her best friend – the eponymous Elsie – and generally being a thorn in the side of the staff at Cherry Tree supported accommodation. One day, a new resident moves in, and Florence is sure it’s a man named Ronnie Butler – but Ronnie died in 1953, and Florence is forced to try and remember what happened sixty years ago (with a bit of help from Elsie). This is a book that deals with the terror that comes from having no one who will listen – or hear – what you’re trying to say to them, but it’s also much more than that. It’s a celebration of the ways in which we are all connected, and how one life can touch and change others (even if it’s not apparent at the time). Moving, thought-provoking, compassionate – but above all, charming. Highly recommended.

Bats in the Belfry by E.C.R. Lorac (1937)

My mother-in-law has bought me quite the collection of British Library Crime Classic books over the years. I like to save most of them for when we’re on our pre-Christmas getaway, as there’s something special about reading these Golden Age gems in an isolated cottage on a Cornish cliff-top. The first one I read this year was Lorac’s Bats in the Belfry – though it’s a London mystery rather than a country house one (which might have been more fitting). Lorac’s mystery revolves around Bruce Attleton, a once successful writer who is happily living off his actress wife’s income. Attleton’s friends – Neil Rockingham and Robert Grenville – become convinced their friend is being blackmailed by a sinister (possibly foreign) man named Debrette, and they decide to do a bit of investigating. Their search takes them to a bizarre and incongruous old building in Notting Hill. Known as the Belfry (or, sometimes, the Morgue) this decrepit old pile was once a religious house but is now a run-down studio favoured by artists. And it seems Debrette has been renting it. Things take a confusing turn when both Attleton and Debrette go missing, and so Rockingham and Grenville turn to C.I.D. (in the shape of Lorac’s regular detective Chief Inspector Macdonald) for assistance – but is everything as it seems? With an excellent (as always) introduction from Martin Edwards, Bats in the Belfry is everything I want from a BL Crime Classic: atmospheric, evocative, and with a strong sense of place and time. Loved it.

Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards (2016)

And I continued my holiday foray into the BL Crime Classics with a collection of short stories. This anthology is a selection of country house mysteries, selected and edited by the excellent Martin Edwards, whose knowledge and affection for Golden Age detective fiction is evident in every title in the BL’s series. This collection is themed around setting – all of the stories take place in what is, to some degree or another, the country seat of a landed family, though (as Edwards points out in his introduction) Golden Age fiction often engages directly with the changing face of the country house through the various socio-political shifts of the twentieth century. Not all of the houses here are still ‘in the family’, and not all of them are as cosily domestic as they might once have been. Nevertheless, all the selected stories share the ‘closed circle’ of the house party mystery, in which a small but often diverse group of people are thrown together for a short time. The stories collected here vary from the ‘straight’ murder mystery (e.g. ‘The Problem of Dead Wood Hall’ by Dick Donovan) to the thriller (e.g. ‘An Unlocked Window’ by Ethel Lina White). There’s even a light-hearted parody of the subgenre from E.V. Knox (‘The Murder at the Towers’). Bookended by pre- and post-Golden Age stories (‘The Copper Beeches’ by Arthur Conan Doyle and ‘Weekend at Wapentake’ by Michael Gilbert), this anthology gives a great overview of the pleasures and perils of the country house.

Cuckoo by Sophie Draper (2018)

I picked this up in the supermarket on a whim while we were away – I don’t know why, as I’d packed enough books to keep me going for months. I had a bit of debate whether to read this or the Christmas-themed BL Crime Classic I’d been saving for the festive season, but in the end decided to go with Draper’s book – and it turned out to be a win-win, as a large part of Cuckoo is set at Christmas too! It’s also the perfect book for reading in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. The blurb intrigued me, but I was sort of expecting something along the lines of other psychological thrillers I’ve read this year: a woman goes back to clear her family home after the death of her stepmother (who hated her). Being back home brings back painful memories of her childhood, and she’s forced to confront the long-buried secrets from her past. Okay, okay – clearly I’m a sucker for this type of plot, as I’ve read at least two other books with that exact premise this year. But… Cuckoo blew me away. I genuinely stayed up for hours unable to put it down (clichéd as that may sound). It’s dark, unsettling and compelling – but it’s also incredibly well-written and just a really good story. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Cuckoo is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and this is totally down to Draper’s excellent storytelling. Loved it.

Portrait of a Murderer: A Christmas Crime Story by Anne Meredith (1933)

Time for another BL Crime Classic, and one that I was saving for the festive season. Although, as it turns out, it’s not wasn’t the most festive book I’ve ever read! Meredith’s novel is an unusual one. Its set-up is very much that of a Golden Age whodunit – an unpleasant man gathers his family together for Christmas at the country house, only to be murdered by one of the guests – but the book is actually a thriller, and a rather cynical and hard-edged one. This isn’t a whodunit, as the reader sees the murder taking place, and is then offered a first-person insight from the murderer as to the reasons and motives. What emerges is a book that almost works as a dissection of Golden Age detective fiction, which reveals the things that are never said in country house mysteries and the subtle obscurities that we fans take for granted. All of the characters in the book are given some backstory and explanation that allows us to see them as people, rather than simply characters in a well-trodden formulaic plot. Most fascinating, for me, is the detail given to one of the housemaids who, in any other book, would have been simply a felicitous plot device. Meredith does a great job of reminding us that all those oodles of undifferentiated servants bustling through Golden Age mysteries are really people with pasts, families, hopes and ambitions. This is not a cosy novel by any means, but it’s certainly an interesting one.

With Our Blessing by Jo Spain (2015)

Another impulse purchase from when we were on holiday – this time, a book I picked up in a charity shop in Truro. And would you believe it? It’s also set at Christmas (or at least the run-up to Christmas)! This is Jo Spain’s debut novel – she’s published (I think) three others since. I’ll admit, Spain’s wasn’t a name I’d come across. I picked the book up because it looked like a good atmospheric winter read, and I’m a sucker for ‘crimes of the past haunt the present’ storylines. And my instincts were right – I really enjoyed this one! The book begins with a prologue set in 1975 – a young woman gives birth in a Magdalene laundry, and her baby is taken from her by the nuns before she can even hold it. The book then moves us into 2010, and D.I. Tom Reynolds is called to investigate the murder of an unidentified elderly woman found mutilated and displayed in Phoenix Park, Dublin. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that the woman turns out to have been a nun, and that the investigation leads Reynolds and his team to a (very atmospheric – and snowed-in) convent. This is a chunky book (surprisingly long for a debut novel), but a real page-turner. The underlying motive for the crime didn’t come as much of a surprise, but Spain’s writing style is engaging and the setting is beautifully evoked. A solid contemporary crime novel – I’m glad I picked this one up.